Sadly, prohibition just doesn't work ...

(Above: the opening gambit of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Prohibition).

The pond has recently finished Ken Burns return to form with his three part series on Prohibition in the United States (what's that, there's still an episode to go on SBS in relation to a show finished in 2011 and now running in 2012 on FTA? How strange ...).

Can the pond just note in passing how much it loathes docudrama re-enactments - vile cockroach products of the Australian documentary scene -  and how pleasing it is to see well-curated images of real people captured for a moment in the heat of history?

At journey's end the moral of the story was that prohibition didn't work.

If there are social habits that disturb, regulation and taxation provide better mechanisms for amelioration (assuming of course you accept that keeping government around to do useful things, like organise transport and prevent mayhem and plan and implement, is a sensible strategy, which would be hard to argue against if only the NSW Liberal and Labor parties didn't keep trying to make Herbert Hoover seem like a genius).

When will Americans realise that the "war on soft drugs" is just a re-run of prohibition, set in motion by that rogue Richard Nixon, and doomed to failure? The only difference being the failure to pass an amendment to the constitution to set the war in motion, and so provide an easy mechanism to bring it to an end ...

Yes, yes, it's a desperate attempt to change the conversation, because inevitably the Alan Jones affair keeps bubbling on like a witch's brew (ditch that witch!)

What's been interesting has the reaction of some of the sods in the ABC.

Last night, for example, Waleed Ali spent an inordinate amount of time worrying that Alan Jones might   have been targeted for his political views (you can listen here if you really want to). It seems to be terribly unsporting to have a reaction to Jones because of his political views - instead you're only allowed to take a view on his singular remark on Juliar Gillard's father.

Amazingly, Ali had Nic Lochner nodding and agreeing that Jones' political views were off limits, and the very last thing the world needed was a campaign to educate Jones about such matters as climate science, or marching off to Canberra on a convoy of chaos.

Then there was the splendid effort of Jonathan Holmes on Media Watch last night (you can watch it here if you really want to), where Holmes pursed his lips, bit on a lemon, and cluck clucked and tut tutted for a lengthy segment about the sins of the Sunday Terror and its journo for recording hapless, unsuspecting Alan Jones and then letting the tape loose upon the world.

Holmes never quite got around to saying it, but the implication was that it would have been so much better if the Terror had simply said nothing about it, swept it under the carpet, and behaved properly, instead of behaving like a tabloid.

Which would have deprived the whole world of the past week of fun.

It was such a convoluted effort - having established that the recording was done in what was promoted as a public event and that Chatham House rules hadn't been established at the start of proceedings - that it was hard to see why Holmes bothered, except perhaps to prove that his fear and loathing of the Sunday Terror exceeded his dislike of Jones.

It's the reason why the feral right and the shock jocks routinely eat for breakfast the hand-wringing, pious, mealy mouthed efforts of the cardigan wearers.

Oh should it have been done, oh was it right and proper, oh really, should we be talking about his political views .... (insert visuals of hand-wringing and knuckle-cracking sound effects here for your docudrama re-enactment) ... while meanwhile Jones has hit the jugular and is already sated by the blood. Or perhaps driven to seek out the next victim.

It was left to big Mal to state the bleeding obvious - that Alan Jones had simply got a taste of his own medicine, and it probably tasted like the cod liver oil the pond was force-fed long ago in Tamworth.

Mr Jones has sought to lead “people’s revolts” for many years. But this was indeed a popular revolt against vicious and destructive public discourse. And while the thousands of tweets would not have affected Mr Jones’ sunny equanimity, they had a marked impact on his advertisers.

Oh dear, Mr. Turnbull, whatever will Waleed Ali and Jonathan Holmes say?

Actually Turnbull had a lot of other things to say (Free at last! Or freedom lost? Liberty in the digital age: 2012 Alfred Deakin Lecture) but in the usual way this thoughts on social media were completely overlooked by the media which preferred to focus on Alan Jones or their navel.

But okay, enough already, as you'd expect, that nattering prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson has also weighed in, and it's a terrible pile of eminently predictable turgid tosh, as you can see in The ultimate dilemma - freedom to preach v freedom of speech.

As is now standard form, the way to defend Jones is to hoe into Jones' enemies, so Henderson gets right into gear by slamming Jenna Price. It seems Price has committed an unpardonable sin. She claims to be an "ordinary" person, who identifies with the small, the defenceless and the vulnerable.

But she's a columnist with the Canberra Times, and is an academic at the UTS. And wouldn't you know it, the UTS is taxpayer-subsidised! Eek! Say no more!

I know, I know. Pass the smelling salts. How dare this member of the chattering elites attack poor hapless Alan (oh yes, the remarks were distasteful and indefensible, but still, please let's continue assaulting Jenna Price for daring to to point out that they were distasteful and indefensible).

Yes, yes, it's just another tired assault by Henderson on left-wing academics, replete with all the usual rhetoric and chips on shoulders, a tired mantra, which it has to be said, sounds even more like a cracked record circling in the one groove each time it gets an outing.

To call Henderson a prattling Polonius is to defame Polonius, who at least had a way with words.

Henderson drags up the matter of Andrew Bolt like a smelly cat that's been buried in the asparagus patch for many a month, and then delivers moral equivalence, which he calls double standards:

Then there is the matter of double standards. In 2011 the ABC paid for, and subsequently defended, the former Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis's comments that the Liberal MP Jillian Skinner was ''like a long-detested nagging landlady with four dead husbands and hairy shoulders''. Ellis never apologised for this insult, which was published on the taxpayer-funded website The Drum. But to the likes of Ms Price, an apology by the former Liberal speechwriter Jones for offensive after-dinner comments at a university function are not acceptable.  

This is a classic ploy. Somehow the behaviour of Bob Ellis is a get out of jail card for Alan Jones? What on earth does the fact that the Drum is a taxpayer-funded website have to do with anything, except that Henderson sees it as some kind of evidence of eternal, despicable damnation? Why should "the likes of Ms Price" be answerable to what it published? Or the mealy mouthings of Bob Ellis in particular?

Why is Henderson incapable of seeing that Jones' apology was half-hearted, mean and offensive, perhaps as offensive as the original crime?

Yes, because in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed equivocator is king.

This is why both the left and the right lose the pond. It's all finger pointing and childish shouting, and look miss, look at what little Bobbie has done ... but miss, miss that's way worse than what little Alan has done ...

And so to a classic childish outburst from Henderson as a wrap up to his piece:

Here's a reality check. Jones is not as influential as his critics or supporters believe. Nor is the Destroy the Joint movement. Ms Price has written on her Facebook page: ''Macquarie Radio Network has offered to meet with us. Perhaps we should hire ANZ Stadium.'' Don't bother. Most of Ms Price's supporters are inner-city types who never listen to 2GB and who could not find their way to the sporting facilities at Homebush, even with the aid of a GPS.

Which seems to invite an ever so cheerful, jolly hockey-sticks inner-city type response.

You really are a determined fuckwit, aren't you Mr. Henderson? If Price has no influence, why did you bother with this ordinary humble academic who thus far has failed to get a job at MacDonalds University of Burgerdom?

If Jones has so little influence, why do you care if he's given a light dust up?

Truly, you and Mr. Jones couldn't find your way around the social media scene even with the aid of a GPS, and you really don't have the first clue about climate science, the role of broadband in the new world, or the role of science in opposing the amazing display of medieval superstition the Catholic church is mounting right around this minute (what a grand question Fr. Daniel Donovan asked, Church Veneration or a Visit with the Addams Family? in his piece for Catholica)..

How did the pond work in a reference to the nun-frightening preserved arm and hand of St. Francis Xavier?

Why it's as easy as working "inner-city types", "taxpayer-funded" and "Bob Ellis" into a piece by Gerard Henderson ...

Sadly it's impossible to prohibit this sort of nonsense. If you tried, the next thing you know it would be turning up like mushrooms in private-enterprise speakeasies and clubs.

But it is possible to remind advertisers that they're associating themselves with a lower class of moonshine and hooch ...

Now come on taxpayer-funded inner-city type hamster lads. Let's see a Gerard Henderson skit, you know it sends him into a fainting fit of the frenzies ...

(Below: the pond never gets tired of a moral equivalence joke).

Speaking of moral equivalence, try this on for size. In the original they were talking about various war crimes, but it seems to fit the atrocities of Alan Jones and Bob Ellis just as well:

If certain acts or statements or insults are crimes, they are crimes whether Alan Jones does them or whether Bob Ellis or Peter Slipper does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us...We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well ...

Feel free to put that poisoned chalice to your lips Mr. Henderson ...